The Making of “Passengers”: The Pre-Departure Subjectivation of Sri Lanka’s Aspiring Migrant Domestic Workers Heading to the Arabian Gulf

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I examine the process of migrant subject-making prior to departure based on the experiences of Sri Lankan women aspiring to become migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the Arabian Gulf. Within a context of commodified, privatized and foreignized care migration regimes, women from developing countries have become “ideal” maids: cheap, docile and hardworking, they satisfy the growing social reproductive needs of more affluent countries. This image of the “ideal” MDW is re/produced, maintained and challenged through technologies of subject-making across the circuits of migration. In a combined public–private, local–transnational, and formal–informal thrust towards subject-making, different actors—including MDWs themselves—use different pre-departure technologies in a sociology of markets. Thus, passengers are carved out even before potential MDWs leave their home country; these passengers reflect different constructions, embodiments and connotations of “ideal” migrant subjects, where labour power is re/produced and exploited in the most intimate sphere.

KEYWORDS:

• “Ideal” migrant subjects
• migrant domestic labour
• pre-departure subjectivation
• Arabian Gulf
• Sri Lanka

Introduction

Over the past few decades, in a context of neoliberal governmentality, care regimes around the world have seen an incredible degree of foreignization of paid domestic labour. In a capitalist crisis of care, women, primarily from less developed countries, have increasingly come to fill the care deficits left behind by upper- and middle-class women in more developed and/or wealthier countries (see Lutz 2018; Marchetti 2021). In a gendered–racialized division of labour, women from developing countries have become a commodity sought after to maintain the sociopolitical stability at both ends of the global care chain. In this way, migrant domestic labour has come to form new subject positions and subjectivities, transforming “particular” groups of women into “ideal” maids: cheap, compliant and disciplined (Liang 2011; Elias and Louth 2016; Withers 2019). In the making of migrant subjects, “pre-departure technologies”, i.e. various control techniques that produce, normalise and challenge the construction of “ideal” MDWs, have proved to be particularly effective and useful. These technological applications provide potential MDWs, most of them with no previous work experience, with their first point of contact with the “world of work” and its formalities. Such technology represents an investment that will enhance hirability in a scenario in which much is at stake for the many parties involved, including state agents, private migration brokers, employers, the public and potential MDWs themselves.

Taking this overarching context into account, in this paper I examine the making of “ideal” migrant subjects in the pre-departure phase of the temporary migration cycle in Sri Lanka: a major exporter of migrant domestic labour in the Global South, mainly to the oil-rich countries of the Arabian Gulf. Thus, I explore migrant subject-making from the perspective of a “labour-sending” country, experiencing a broad turn towards neoliberalism and recently under the socio-political effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Migrant subject-making through various pre-departure control techniques has received little attention in the research on migration in Sri Lanka, which is not commensurate with the level of importance migrant domestic labour has in Sri Lanka’s national economy in terms of the foreign exchange earnings it generates. It may be the case that MDWs, the so-called “passengers” in the migration business, have not previously been recognised as playing a pivotal role in Sri Lanka’s extant economic crisis, to which migrant domestic work provides an essential solution. This opens up the possibility of considering alternative ways to look at subject-making and the migrant subjects themselves: a discourse that is fraught with political, cultural and emotional overtones, and which surprisingly has not yet been mapped out in crisis-hit Sri Lanka. So, here, I make an open-ended and suggestive attempt to fill this gap in current research. This is the central contribution of this paper to extant migration scholarship.

Literature review

Sourcing the “right sort” of migrant worker is an issue to be resolved by contemporary global migration regimes (Elias and Louth 2016). Therefore, subject-making is an important element of contemporary migration governance (Rodriguez and Schwenken 2013): a co-performance that produces the type of migrant worker who meets the growing and changing demands of the capitalist economy. This has proved especially important for transnational domestic labour regimes. On the one hand, migrant domestic work has directly gained importance as a means of expanding the global capitalist economy by reproducing the commodity of labour power; on the other hand, it brings to light the persistent gender–class–race ideologies that continue to shape the transnational care market, legitimising the exploitation of women from socioeconomically challenged countries for capitalist gain (see Liang 2011). The discourse of migrant subject-making therefore percolates certain gendered, classed and racialized categorisations and the valorisation of household labour, paid and unpaid, in the ideological construction of the home (see Elias and Louth 2016). As important as the gender–class–race ideologies may be in the making of migrant subjects, insufficient attention has been given to religion as a social and cultural structure that shapes the discourse of subject-making (see Näre 2010). Hence, it is important, through research, to take account of the impact of religious beliefs on the normative judgements and claims of the image of the “ideal” MDW.

The production of migrant subjects occurs through specific rationalities that create the conditions and identities of migration (Debonneville 2021), which can be called performative and transformative practices of creating “good” migrant workers (Findlay et al. 2013). As some studies argue (see Rodriguez and Schwenken 2013; Elias and Louth 2016), migrant subject-making is a collaborative effort: performed by MDWs themselves and by those with a vested interest in migrant labour, such as government agents, migration brokers, employers and the public; it is a product of social interactions between market actors in a “sociology of markets”, where “ideal” subjects are structured through relative power. Different subject-making techniques can lead to different rationalities intended to endow MDWs with the right sort of skills necessary to perform transnational domestic work (Rudnyckyj 2004). In Foucauldian terms (1997, 225), subject-making constitutes specific technologies for producing “governable subjects”, i.e. “ … modes of training and modification of individuals, not only in the obvious sense of acquiring certain skills but also in the sense of acquiring certain attitudes”. As Rudnyckyj (2004, 419) colourfully describes it, these “technologies of servitude” construct bodies of “particular” women, the socioeconomic underclass of developing countries, for “particular” kinds of work, dirty, dangerous and demeaning, that satisfy the physical and emotional needs of the upper- and middle-class in the wealthier parts of the world (Liang 2011).

In this way, migrant subject-making involves a range of knowledge practices: the socially, culturally, politically and economically constructed understandings that shape everyday processes in relation to the making of “ideal” MDWs. Knowledge practices are not neutral; they are inextricably linked to the conditions of power that frame the circumstances within which migration performances occur (Findlay et al. 2013, 146). Nevertheless, the form of power exercised through such knowledge is not necessarily suppressive, it can be productive. Unfortunately, most migration research conceptualises disciplinary technologies only as oppressive and counter-productive, while privileging the interpretation of subject-making from the perspective of a single actor. By contrast, insufficient attention has been paid to understanding subject-making from the varied perspectives of the wide range of actors involved (which, as mentioned above, includes the state, brokers, employers and MDWs), which can produce a broader, more inclusive and integrated social narrative around subject-making.

The migration cycle acts as a heuristic to allow us to identify the technologies of subject-making (Rodriguez and Schwenken 2013), where insight into the pre-departure phase of temporary migration proves especially useful, although it has been little explored to date. Pre-departure subject-making is a long-term investment in migration with potential returns spread across the whole migration cycle, where many MDWs opt to travel back and forth between their home and host country, weighing up the possibilities and benefits of repeated migration. Endowed with “state authority and/or private power” (Elias 2018), different players in this subject-making strive to produce easily hireable and manageable MDWs who fit comfortably into foreign work regimes that are often decidedly unpleasant.

Nevertheless, subject-making is neither unproblematic nor uncontested. Existing research (see Rosenau 1995; van der Ham et al. 2014; Chee 2020) shows that MDWs have the potential to challenge the kind of human subjectivity coxed out of them by neoliberalism. Subaltern resistance marks “an unsettling presence that persistently disrupts the larger stakes of securing the regime of capital accumulation” (De Genova 2009, 461). However, MDWs’ everyday acts of dissent are dealt with via negotiation rather than negation where power is reworked from below in a manner that makes life more bearable (Chandra 2015); migrant subject-making thus apparently produces alternative constructions of resistance in the face of hegemonic transnational formations. This resistance from below can be a powerful force in producing and shaping migrant recruitment and employment regimes and deserves to be investigated.

Methodology

I adopt qualitative methods to address my prime question of interest here: “In what ways do pre-departure technologies produce ‘ideal’ MDWs?” I carried out fieldwork in Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait over the period 2019–2022. In Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, I conducted direct personal interviews with Sri Lankan MDWs (twenty-five interviews), employers (twenty interviews), Sri Lankan consular staff (nine interviews) and private migration brokers (five interviews) on the premises of the Sri Lankan embassies. In Sri Lanka, I interviewed private migration brokers (nine interviews), managerial staff of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) (six interviews) and non-state agents from the Association of Licenced Foreign Employment Agents (ALFEA) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) (a total of three interviews). These interviews were conducted personally, in private (e.g. brokerage agencies) and public spaces, (e.g. public office rooms), or at a distance, i.e. online and through field assistants in Sri Lanka, due to the political unrest prevailing in the country at the time which prevented me from conducting direct fieldwork personally. Pre-departure subjectivation of aspiring Sri Lankan MDWs in the Arabian Gulf has not previously been explored via primary data sources such as those I use here, who constitute key agents in migrant subject-making; this marks an original contribution of my study.

I conducted my fieldwork subject to the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2016/679 concerning the creation of, access to, storage and dissemination of personal data. My fieldwork was therefore guided by the key principles of the EU data protection regime, ensuring appropriate security, integrity and confidentiality of the data and of the research participants. Thus, I conducted the interviews subject to effective informed consent from individual MDWs. The research participants were always treated as autonomous agents capable of making decisions for themselves.

The interviews were conducted in Sinhalese,¹ English and Arabic: Sinhalese with the Sri Lankan MDWs, both Sinhalese and English with the SLBFE agents, consular staff and brokers, and English and Arabic, the latter with the help of interpreters when interviewing the employers and foreign brokers. The interviews were audio-recorded, except when participants refused to have the interview recorded in which case only field notes were used. Later, I transcribed and translated the interviews into English. Field observations in public, semi-public and private spaces, such as entrance halls, airports, markets, restaurants, residential neighbourhoods and streets, provided me with important field data. During the observations I took extensive field notes, which provided important written records. Secondary data sources, such as training manuals and policy documents, were also used and provided me with rich material that complemented the field data. The data analysis was based on thematic and narrative inquiry; the former involved identifying and examining common themes or patterns across the data, while the latter entailed systematically interpreting the ways in which the participants gave meaning to their lives through narratives.

The Sri Lanka–Arabian Gulf care migration regime

Clearly, Sri Lanka is an emigration country, a remittance economy and, in Rodriguez’s terms (2008, 794), a “labour brokerage state” that produces, distributes and regulates “particular” women for paid domestic work predominantly in the oil-rich Arabian Gulf. MDWs’ remittances have contributed significantly to Sri Lanka’s economic development since the introduction of export-oriented development policies in 1977, which opened up opportunities for paid domestic work for many Sri Lankan women (Withers 2019). Sri Lanka currently records an average annual departure rate of around 60,000 MDWs (SLBFE 2020) who are “live-ins”, in the sense that they are provided board and lodging “in” their employer’s private household for free. The vast majority of these MDWs come from socioeconomically challenged backgrounds and try to make ends meet through migration, not only for their stay-behind children, but also for their husbands and often the extended family too. Sri Lanka’s “modernity reforms” have therefore strategically traded on this so-called “labour of love”, producing a new (under)class of translocal subjects and subjectivities within the dominant structures of capitalist patriarchy and state-making.

Sri Lanka’s economic liberalisation reforms corresponded to an upsurge in demand for migrant domestic labour in labour-importing countries in the Arabian Gulf (see Gunawardana 2014). That increase was encouraged by two landmark developments within Arab societies. First, rapidly growing oil revenues in Arab states following the international oil crisis of 1973 have meant that many women in the Arabian Gulf can afford the convenience of private MDWs in their transition to a modernised, affluent lifestyle within an increasingly globalised world. Second, the Arabian Gulf has recently experienced a growing participation of women in the national workforces, leading to the formation of dual-earner/dual-career family households. This correlates significantly with the growing demand for MDWs in a scenario in which Arab men continue to be absent from the reproductive sphere.

Subject-making in pre-departure: a co-performance

In Sri Lanka’s migration industry, the state, private migration brokers, employers and MDWs constitute the key players. The sector primarily exports paid domestic labour to the oil-rich Arabian Gulf. Each interested party has its own stakes in migration and specific interests may combine or contrast when it comes to meeting the standards and expectations of a desirable migrant worker, thus co-framing the circumstances within which migrant subjects and their subjectivities are created. The pre-departure phase of migration therefore engages a complex and often contentious interplay between the state, brokers, employers and MDWs, each using different technologies and power relations in the making of “ideal” MDWs. The process of recruitment and pre-departure training provides instructive examples of co-performed migrant subjectivity in Sri Lanka’s migration business. What follows is a detailed account of this.

The making of “ideal” MDWs in the process of recruitment

The process of recruiting Sri Lankan MDWs into private Arab households takes the form of a “translocal” operation in and between Sri Lanka and the destination countries in the Arabian Gulf. It involves public and private, formal and informal, and local and foreign/transnational actors, who join forces in trading in this “labour of love” within an embedded cross-border labour market. The recruitment process is therefore shaped by different dynamics of power, involving constant negotiation, tension and investment in the production, distribution and regulation of MDWs; and thus technologies of subject-making are employed to produce “ideal” migrant workers.

Recruitment in an embedded market: the role of the state and public policy

The state and public policy play an essential role in regulating the process of MDW recruitment. Intended to counteract the possibility of market injustices or failures, the policy and regulations of recruitment are set by the state which lays down the standards of “ideal” MDWs and “good” practices in producing them. The Family Background Report (FBR) policy provides an ideal example of this process of state intervention in the privatisation of regulation and management of MDW recruitment. Introduced in 2013, the policy was initially aimed exclusively at potential MDWs but then extended in 2015 to cover all categories of potential women migrant workers and prevents certain groups of Sri Lankan women from labour migration. It bans women below 45 years of age with children under five from migrating abroad for paid work, while requiring potential women migrant workers with children between five and 18 to plan satisfactory childcare for them during their absence.

These FBR restrictions are based on the notion that the mother’s absence has negative effects on the developmental trajectories of children left behind: a gendered conviction that has been supported and reinforced through recurrent public outcry and criticism in Sri Lanka. The idea is that women, not men, must take responsibility for the care and welfare of the family (Handapangoda 2023). The FBR further states that all married women must certify their husband’s approval on the FBR papers before they can migrate. Regarding the FBR age-based restrictions on MDWs, the minimum and maximum ages at which women can enter the transnational care market are generally 21 and 55. Men, on the other hand, are allowed to migrate for paid work at 18 with no upper age limit being specified.

Of late, unforeseen national adversities have led to extensive relaxation of the gendered migration policies in Sri Lanka. The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and Sri Lanka’s ongoing economic crisis have led to a partial lifting of FBR restrictions that is intended to increase female labour migration and the subsequent inflow of remittances into the economy. Initially, the FBR was temporarily suspended and replaced by an affidavit, which is considered a less bureaucratic and time-consuming measure aimed at avoiding needless delays in recruitment. Then, since July 2022, the restrictions based on children’s age have been relaxed, with a new upper age limit of two years, together with the suspension of age-based restrictions on MDWs by a government decision that has been called a “long-overdue and welcome move” (see Weeraratne, The Island, 8th July 2022). This allows more women to opt for migration and partially levels the playing field. The FBR in its “various versions” represents, on the one hand, a form of “regulation through responsibilisation” (Joseph et al., 2022, 1) and, on the other, responsibilisation through deregulation, thus constructing aspiring MDWs as self-regulating and self-responsible subjects in a dualistic state policy.

The state’s recent policy decision to give the job category of domestic worker a “new name”, “domestic housekeeping assistant”, signifies perhaps the most gendered of all state technologies of subject-making exercised through meaning and categorisation. As an SLBFE senior manager who was interviewed blatantly admitted: “Traditionally, the “domestic worker”, a term which I don’t even like to use, has a bad image in the society; how domestic workers are given value and treated in the society” (17th November 2021). In Sri Lanka, the formations of state governing technologies are thus framed in a persistent ideological discrimination within politics, exercising a form of regulatory symbolic violence against MDWs, not “just” against their body and bodily emotions but against their whole personhood. Paradoxically, this political “act of social upgrading” apparently reinforces the deeply rooted economic and cultural undervalorisation of domestic work, whereas “the new name and new status” did not bring with it any upgrading in MDWs’ salary or conditions of work.

State policy revisions therefore continue to discriminate against aspiring MDWs on the basis of gender, age, civil status and class. Being exclusively directed at women while exempting men, these aspects of Sri Lanka’s migration policies demonstrate an explicit gender bias in the recruitment infrastructure. Sri Lanka’s migration policies therefore constitute “state-authorised” technologies of subject-making that are gendered and classed, through which women’s bodies, emotions and sexuality are subject to constant scrutiny and ad hoc regulation. The technologies are constructed, shaped and furthered by deep-rooted gendered discourses on sex roles and identities as well as by spontaneous factors, such as public outcry in a characteristically androcentric system of migration governance. They signify the stability of gendered knowledge systems in local society, whether it is every day, expert or popularised knowledge. The tragic life stories of the two Sri Lankan MDWs in Saudi Arabia, Rizana Nafeek, who was beheaded for the death of a baby in her care in 2005, and an anonymous other, sentenced to death by stoning for adultery in 2015, although her life was spared on appeal, mark the most extreme cases that have obliged policymakers to face concerted public action. The two cases highlight the gendered construction of MDWs not only as vulnerable and unprotected subjects but as a/sexual objects, enacted and reinforced by technologies of migration governance.

Brokers’ latitude for subject-making

The market is a constituent element of migration governance at both ends of the transnational care chain. A novel strategy for Sri Lanka’s reeling welfare state has been to invite market institutions to co-perform some of its operations. For the authoritarian welfare states in the Arabian Gulf, market engagement is about maintaining sociopolitical stability against the backdrop of ambitious social policy reforms, including large-scale budget cuts over the years. Within the market, most migration business is co-performed by state-approved migration brokers both in Sri Lanka (called local agents) and in the destination countries in the Arabian Gulf (called foreign agents). Operating between multiple sets of state regulations, these brokers organise and ease the process of MDW recruitment in many different ways, from scouting for aspiring MDWs, finding potential employers, and organising and facilitating paperwork to actual placement (e.g. offering to drive MDWs to the airport, if necessary). Most of the brokers are ex-migrant workers and their years of experience working and living in the Arabian Gulf provides them with the “resources” necessary for recruitment. These include not only skills and knowledge about recruitment but also close acquaintance with the host society including social values, norms and belief systems as well as access to social networks that constitute specific technologies of subject-making.

In reaching out to find potential MDWs, brokers often rely on informal, village-level middle(wo)men, “brokers from below”, colloquially referred to as subagents and most of who are also ex-migrant workers. As van Eerbeek and Hedberg (2021, 831) point out based on their knowledge of brokerage in Thai–Swedish wild berry businesses, local embeddedness is anchored by personal biographies, such as histories of migration and work. Working for commission, which is often excessive, from both brokers and potential MDWs, subagents connect otherwise unconnected city-based brokers and village-based aspiring MDWs. They also act as trusted unofficial “migration information points” for aspiring MDWs. However, subagents’ intermediation in recruitment has been prohibited by the state due to frequent cases of fraud and misconduct connected to them; yet they continue to operate in the background as key players in MDW recruitment and subjectivation, depicting a form of “resistance from below”.

Brokers act as “bureaucratic interpreters” (Wee, Goh, and Yeoh 2020, 994). They translate policy texts into practice in the form of private contracts and both tacit and explicit advice, thereby working with and through the state to co-produce a governance regime that draws on paid domestic labour (see Wee, Goh, and Yeoh 2020). In this way, they help MDWs to navigate, and often subvert, migration and border controls using the opportunities presented by a weak rule of law and corrupt migration bureaucracy (see Urinboyev 2021). They often operate outside the regulatory umbrella of the state, colluding with various actors including MDWs themselves, with the risk of both parties being blacklisted by the SLBFE. An MDW described working out the checks and controls on migration with the assistance of her migration broker. As the mother of a child below the age of five, she was not entitled to migrate for work according to the FBR policy. Nevertheless, she did so with the help of her broker.

The broker knew that I was married, but the Bureau [SLBFE] did not. He knew everything: that I had a child under five. … . I wanted to go to Kuwait, but he decided that I should go to Saudi Arabia instead. … . Also, he bought my air ticket. I did not have to pay anything. I agreed to a monthly salary of riyal 900². (MDW, Saudi Arabia, 2nd March 2020)

Another MDW, when asked whether she understood the contract and the language it was in, replied: “I did not know. They [migration broker] asked me to sign it and explained it to me later. [The broker] told me that I should be with that family for two years and my monthly salary was riyal 1,000” (MDW, Saudi Arabia, 1st March 2020).

The brokers produce, control and manage MDWs’ choices, trajectories and conditions of migration, as well as their market value and bodily goodness, thereby (re)producing structural conditions that precarize, if not hyper-precarize, their labour and lives during the course of migration. They often take unfair advantage of aspiring MDWs’ vulnerability for financial gain. Nevertheless, MDWs are not passive victims but often challenge the victim discourses that construct them. The practice of “personal commission” peculiar to the Sri Lanka–Arabian Gulf MDW recruitment regime forms part of this: during recruitment MDWs receive a personal commission from their brokers, which symbolises a form of “thank you money”; but in reality, it serves as an incentive to draw MDWs into “the business” and as a business strategy to beat competition in the brokerage market. This commission may range from several thousand Sri Lankan rupees (e.g. Rs. 25,000, an amount equivalent to some US$100) to several hundred thousand rupees (e.g. Rs. 250,000, equivalent to around US$1,000), and is recovered by the brokers via the agency fee paid by employers. Although prohibited by the Government of Sri Lanka, it continues to be an important “backdoor practice” in MDW recruitment. Potential MDWs can therefore more fittingly be called “implicated subjects of precarization”, often liaising with brokers in order to work around the checks and controls on the recruitment process.

Although the personal commission offers MDWs and their stay-behind significant others an attractive lump-sum of financial aid, it simultaneously ties MDWs to their brokers, who thereby maintain control over them. The brokers strategize this by making the “payment in arrears”, whereby MDWs are paid the commission when approaching departure or even after they have arrived in the destination country. The brokers exploit this payment strategy not only to maintain control over potential MDWs, but also to misappropriate the commission, with MDWs having reported not receiving the full commission promised. The practice of “thank you money” therefore shows how capitalistic recruitment processes are affected by social norms, customs, rituals, and different forms and degrees of violence in an embedded cross-border labour market. The payment of personal commission is a technology used to produce governable subjects, explicitly by brokers and implicitly by employers, through which the latter enact a master–servant relationship even before it actually begins. In the Arab world and other parts of the Global South, including Sri Lanka, it is perfectly normal and an accepted part of the “culture” to pay such commission (see Argyle 1982), symbolising goodwill as well as power and prestige.

Migration brokers are also “language brokers” (Dorner, Orellana and Li-Grining 2007, 458), who translate and interpret employers for MDWs, and vice versa, thereby rendering them understandable and meaningful to one another (Chávez 2009; Wee, Goh, and Yeoh 2020). They mediate and modulate knowledge between potential MDWs and employers as well as that coming from the state to produce desirable and employable workers. This act of translation by brokers often entails a degree of “gentle” violence, as the translation may be arbitrary, partial, fragmentary or decontextualised (Dingwaney, 1996; Wee, Goh, and Yeoh 2020). Based on Indonesian MDWs in Singapore’s migration industry, Wee, Goh, and Yeoh (2020, 994) note that the translation choices of “maid agents” have repercussions for the lived realities of MDWs. Thus, through translation, as a socially regulated activity susceptible to relations of power, MDWs are subject to mis/perceptions and mis/conceptions of cross-cultural communication. The following quote sheds light on this—how migration brokers “translate” MDWs into desirable migrant subjects, which is bound to feature some form/s or degree/s of violence:

You know these agencies [migration brokers] bring housemaids. I will tell you the truth; they are lying. Those housemaids have no training. They don’t know anything. The agencies just bring them, give them a certificate and leave. This is the truth. You may not believe this. When I want a housemaid or a driver, I want someone with work experience, not a new one. … . There is a good demand for Sri Lankan MDWs in Saudi Arabia, but the agents are not bringing in enough workers. The supply is low. Therefore, the cost of hiring Sri Lankan MDWs is very high. (Saudi employer, male, 2nd March 2020)

The brokers exploit the act of translation as a linguistic, social and discursive technology of subject-making through which they produce gender-, race-, nationality- and language-based stereotypes of MDWs. In this way, they give rise to a “migrant division of labour” (Wills et al. 2009, 258) in the private Arab household as this quote from a broker illustrates: “Our women will take care of the children like their own, if they get attached to the place. I would rather say not ‘like’ mothers, but they are the mothers. Children are so attached to them. … . Filipina domestic workers are preferred because they speak English and also because of their light skin colour. But our women are preferred more because of their integrity” (Local agent, female, 3rd March 2022).

In this migrant division of labour, Sri Lankan MDWs are stereotyped as having desirable nurturing skills, while Filipinas have English language skills that meet employers’ desire for “language modernisation” that matches Westernisation. In this way, the brokers construct new hierarchies and social inequalities while reinforcing and modifying the existing ones, thereby subjectifying MDWs to multifaceted, intersecting structures of power and oppressive stereotypes. The brokers are also “market manipulators”, who artificially inflate prices by controlling labour supply and possibly creating labour shortages. They do this by exploiting the “distance” separating potential employers and MDWs across national borders and social and governance structures (see Findlay et al. 2013). The ensuing costs of such poor governance of migration brokers are borne by employers through excessive recruitment costs, and then recovered through exploitation, overwork and non-payment of salary to MDWs.

The brokers are also “career counsellors”: through advice, assurances, explanations of possibilities and warnings they police and guide potential MDWs on their journey to the Arabian Gulf, filled with dreams and hope. They exploit language and linguistics as powerful tools to construct migrant subjects and subjectivities, as the following personal account by a broker shows:

 … I talk with lamaie [girls] in detail. I keep in touch with them over the phone while they are overseas; I talk with them about their problems, like workload. A housemaid is actually an uneducated person. So, we should give her a kind of brainwash and get what’s in her head, like where she has worked before, has she run away from her employer and worked as a live-out and so on. If I find out that she was a runaway or a live-out, I will not send her. The other thing is she cannot migrate if she is blacklisted by the SLBFE³ … . I personally negotiate with sponsors [employers] about the salary and make them agree an extra payment. … . However, the girls must work as they promised … . If the ‘madam’ [female employer] wants fish biryani, she must cook fish biryani for her. During recruitment, I get a clear idea of her skills. I ask her what she can cook and so on. In most cases, ‘madams’ talk to them directly over the phone before recruiting them. They negotiate with them over the phone, for example, by telling them ‘I am going to pay you this much, if you can do these things for me. If not, I will pay you only this much’ (Local agent, female, 16th March 2022).

Using linguistic devices like lamaie (girls) and mage lamaie (my girls) to refer to MDWs, and “madam” for female employers, agents introduce the concept of power to the employer–employee relationship before it starts. Calling MDWs “my girls” and stereotyping them as “uneducated” conveys a strong sense of power, ownership and subjectedness, portraying them as easily controllable and exploitable. However, these acts and strategies of subject-making do not go without a response: potential MDWs have participated in a range of unconventional labour politics, undermining and challenging their subjectivation. Outright refusal to migrate or running away from the airport to avoid migration after having collected the personal commission in part or in full are some of the instances of “resistance from below”. Perhaps these “runaway passengers” are the reason behind brokers offering to drive MDWs to the airport and keeping them under surveillance until they have boarded the plane. Nevertheless, the broker‒MDW relationship is not void of affect and sentiment. This is what one broker had to say about this:

Every day, I wish and pray that every girl who leaves the country benefits from her trip … that she will work there happily and safely, earn something and return to her motherland safely … like I wish for my own children. Every girl who got corona called me from overseas. My son and his wife are doctors. … . I provide them with my son’s help not only for corona, but also for other illnesses. I give him my phone and tell him to help them, give them medical advice. So, they give their blessings to us. (Local agent, female, 16th March 2022)

Mediation by brokers, specifically female ones, thus involves both MDWs’ professional and personal life scenarios: brokers portray themselves as “personal counsellors” and “family therapists”. Recruitment often leads to MDWs and brokers forming life-long relationships and dependencies on one another. However, this portrayal of maternalistic benevolence includes implications for power and control (Marchetti, Cherubini, and Geymonat 2021). Deshingkar (2017), drawing on knowledge of Bangladeshi brokers and migrant workers, explains that migrant workers feel more protected by the “moral contract” with the broker, although brokers can exercise greater control over migrant workers due to excessive dependence on them as their only migration support.

The power of employers

The employers’ tastes and preferences are powerful criteria in defining the “goodness” of MDWs. The following quotes shed light on this:

Employers have their own specifications, like age, below 45 years, skin colour, fair or light-skinned because some employers don’t like dark women. According to these specifications, we select the worker. … . If we don’t meet the requirements of employers, it’s a problem. It’s our duty to provide the right person for the right job. (Local agent, male, 18th February 2022)

They [Sri Lankan MDWs] are clean, they are honest, they have amana [integrity]. … . You know, she [he was referring to his Sri Lankan MDW who was sitting behind him in a far corner of the room] is honest. She took good care of my children when they were young. … Filipinas are not as good with children. They only care about themselves and money. (Saudi employer, male, 2nd March 2020)

The tastes and preferences of potential employers lead to MDWs’ subjectivation in the process of recruitment in three distinct ways. First, they create hiring queues based on social categories, such as gender, nationality, religion, language (Arabic and English), skin colour (race), physical appearance and age, which shape recruitment decisions. Second, these group-based characteristics are shorthand for “good workers” (Scott and Fredrik Rye 2021) that effect a division of migrant labour within private Arab households while producing stereotypes and desirable migrant bodies. For example, in the order of preference based on nationality and race (skin tone), Sri Lankan MDWs are considered “good” mothers (nurturers) while Filipinas have desirable English language skills, Western mannerisms and physical attractiveness as defined by light skin tone, thought to be the standard of beauty. Nevertheless, as a criterion of recruitment, perhaps religion occupies the most important place in hiring queues, where employers in the Arabian Gulf assign greater value to faith concordance when hiring MDWs. As Muslims, employers obviously favour Muslim Sri Lankan MDWs over Buddhists, the least preferred, if outright rejected. As a predominantly Buddhist country, this “religious intolerance” problematises the process of recruitment, as the following quote shows:

“ … . I am not shy to say that we are here in a Muslim country. In a Muslim country, our rule is that people who are working for us should be Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, anyone of those religions, but there are, for example, non-believers [in this case Buddhists]. Some say I want Christian, I want Jewish, but I don’t want non-believers. … . We work with offices, companies there [brokers in Sri Lanka and other sending countries]. We tell people [employers] what they tell us. They tell us she is Christian, she is Muslim and she is … So, we trust them there”. (Foreign agent, male, Kuwait, 4th August 2022)

Religion simultaneously constructs and de-constructs migrant subjectivities while religious intolerance is dealt with through a combined effort by brokers and aspiring MDWs in a false construction of desirable migrant bodies. This includes co-performances, such as hiding true religious identity and impersonating a relatively acceptable religious worldview, through which “non-believers”, in this case Buddhist MDWs, are salvaged and saved. In terms of Islamic literature (see Sevinç, Coleman, and Hood 2018), Buddhists are considered non-believers in the wider sense; perhaps Buddhists deny the existence of a creator God, the antithesis of Islam which claims God is the sole source of all creation. The MDWs’ agency is severely constrained by these subject positions offered through them (Pratt 1997, 166). These “informed stereotypes” (Scott and Fredrik Rye 2021, 473) are particularly important in recruitment due to the distance that separates potential MDWs and employers; as mentioned above, they are separated by physical distance—between the countries of origin and destination—as well as by institutional distance, where brokers occupy the middle ground (Findlay et al. 2013, 147). Moreover, MDWs’ emotions are subject to constant scrutiny and regulation through employers’ tastes and preferences, obliging them to follow a wide array of display rules, from discipline, loyalty, integrity and readiness to work, to maternal love, affect and intimacy.

Kafala, a system of private sponsorship by the employer (called the kafeel in Arabic, meaning “sponsor”), certainly characterises the most important rule of law governing the recruitment of MDWs in the Arabian Gulf. Kafala is a customary law that defines the employer–employee relationship, bestowing employers with an exclusive right to MDWs’ work and residency status in the country of destination. This means that an MDW’s entry, residence and work, and exit from the destination country are subject to her employer’s explicit approval. Also, MDWs are required to surrender their passports to their employers immediately upon arrival. In Foucauldian terms (1984), kafala “interferes with MDWs’ liberty of action” and simply creates a condition of “unfreedom” or the denial of “negative liberty”, thereby undermining the logic of the market. From this perspective, although MDWs are contractual partners, they are not independent persons with the right to quit the job as they please. Being trapped is seen as a form of structural violence that leads to labour trafficking and contract-slavery (Parreñas 2023). In this way, not only does kafala extract MDWs’ labour but also their sense of self and existence, leaving them to serve the capitalist interests of global petromonarchies. Kafala thus signifies possibly the most damning of the technologies of subject-making in the Arabian Gulf.

This technology works in the way of a sponsorship, called a “brokerage fee”, which is usually excessive and borne by the employer. For example, the standard rate for recruiting one Sri Lankan MDW in Saudi Arabia is US$5,500–6,500 and in Kuwait US$3,000–3,500. The employer holds this fee in a frozen bank account during recruitment and it is only released to the broker on arrival of the MDW if he/she is satisfied that the MDW meets the criteria specified on the job application. The brokerage fee is split between the local and foreign agents, as agreed in the business agreement, from which recruitment costs are recovered. The recruitment of MDWs through kafala therefore emulates “slave trade”, in which the employer purchases the MDW at a single price, thus unconditionally binding her to him/her. The whole commerce behind this master (mistress)–servant (slave) relationship is connected to the social, political, economic and legal context/s, within which labour power is produced, reproduced, exploited and controlled.

The excessive brokerage fee carries a form of liability for brokers, which lies in a binding rule of kafala called the “six-month rule”. This means that, during the first six months of the MDW’s two-year work contract, the broker can be obliged to either return the full brokerage fee to the employer or to provide a replacement within an agreed time period, if the recruited MDW fails to live up to the contract for any reason, for example, falling ill or running away from the employer. The six-month rule therefore amplifies the precarity and vulnerability of MDWs since the repaying of the brokerage fee may mean that she too is required to repay her share of the recruitment costs, including her personal commission. MDWs are therefore subject to constant scrutiny, discipline and control by brokers, local and foreign, during recruitment and beyond arrival in the destination country, when meeting the employer and taking on her duties, for a minimum of six months of her two-year contract.

Pre-departure training

MDWs are subject to both formal and informal pre-departure training, which is aimed at setting standards for desirable MDWs in terms of skills, attitudes and values. In Rudnyckyj’s “technologies of servitude” (2004, 419), pre-departure training constitutes the rationalities that are intended to provide potential MDWs with the capacities necessary to perform domestic work in countries outside their own. Liang (2011), referring to MDW training in Indonesia for the Taiwanese market, argues that through training processes not only do these women acquire the skills necessary to perform domestic work, but their bodies and minds are also coached to be docile and disciplined, to develop the essential ethics and attitudes of a live-in MDW. Pre-departure training is therefore an important technology through which the “product” of the “good” worker is achieved in bodily form and with bodily expression such that migrant bodies are subjecte to surveillance and control at different scales and locations other than at the border (Findlay et al. 2013).

Formal training and making “professional” migrant subjects

The formal training which is provided by the SLBFE constitutes a mandatory Level 3 National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) government accredited residential coaching programme designed for MDWs intending to migrate to the Arabian Gulf for the first time. It runs for 21 days and costs roughly US$50 per worker. The residential training centres typify what Erving Goffman (1961) calls a “total institution”: a place of work and residence where a group of women sharing similar socioeconomic circumstances are shut away from their families and the wider community and together lead a regimented period of their lives. All aspects of their lives in the training centre, including learning, work and sleep, are shared. The training centres thus reflect how they mould the potential migrant workers and what the migrant workers themselves can make of life inside them. Aspiring MDWs need to fulfil certain criteria in order to qualify for the training, including: the ability to read, write and understand their mother language, which can be either Sinhala or Tamil⁴, with training offered separately in Sinhala and Tamil; a minimum height of four feet and six inches; age between 21 and 55; and a certificate of good health and good character.

A day at the training centre starts at 5:45 am. Dressed in uniform trousers and shirts/t-shirts, trainees begin the day with physical exercises to increase their energy levels and to help them maintain self-discipline during the rigours training schedule for the day. The programme concludes at 5 pm each day with trainees engaging in an evaluation of the day and cleaning the facilities. The training curriculum consists of 12 modules, combining practical and theoretical learning in relevant ways. They are: housekeeping, laundry, food preparation, food and beverage service, caregiving, communication skills, common workplace competencies, safe migration awareness, departure/arrival stage, return and reintegration, family wellbeing and other administrative skills. Working on a duty roster, the trainees also perform the tasks of cleaning, cooking and serving food and beverages to fellow trainees and training instructors, which give them hands-on experiential learning for the job they aspire to. At the end of the training, those who have successfully completed the programme are conferred the NVQ Level 3 Certificate that confirms their competence for migrant domestic labour in the Arabian Gulf. As well as completing the practical and theoretical learning at the training centre, they must also pass a final examination that consists of practical and paper-based evaluation.

The SLBFE training therefore adopts a professional approach to a skill that is considered stereotypically natural for women. It constitutes a conscious attempt to give women’s work a sense of worth through skill development and recognition (George 2013). This is what a senior SLBFE manager had to say about this policy-induced effort to introduce professionalism to a category of workers who are considered neither skilled nor educated:

An “ideal worker” [a formulation introduced by the researcher] is one who is living in their employer’s residence in such a manner that the employer doesn’t feel or realize her presence. One’s home is one’s castle. We don’t like to see any outsiders living in our home. We need privacy. This is a challenge for a domestic worker. But an ideal domestic worker is one who works invisibly. If she can come to that level of performance, level of professionalism, then she is a worker in high demand. She will do a good job at work, while maintaining her distance. That professionalism should be there. (Senior SLBFE manager, 17th November 2021)

Thus, the SLBFE training strives to master professionalism in a type of work that is apparently unprofessional, the gendered labour of social reproduction, performed in an alternative workplace, the employer’s private home, while appealing to new ways of maximising labour. The rhetoric of professionalism reflects the persistent undervalorisation of domestic labour and those who perform it, while signifying a “surreal” boundary between trained and untrained MDWs.

Training from below

Informal training, which can be more fittingly called “informal career counselling”, constitutes an equally or perhaps more important component of pre-departure training and thus subject-making. During recruitment, potential MDWs are subject to a kind of “training from below” provided by brokers, both local agents and subagents, that is intended to transform them into desirable migrant subjects—easily hireable and manageable. As previously mentioned, through advice, assurances, explaining possibilities and warnings, brokers provide potential MDWs with essential information, mostly first-hand experiences as ex-migrant workers in the Arabian Gulf. Not only does such information help potential MDWs to develop the skills necessary to perform migrant domestic work, but more importantly, it regulates the workers and guides them to be docile, disciplined and hardworking, as required of “good” MDWs. Brokers who were interviewed described their personal version of training during their encounters with aspiring MDWs in the brokering agencies as follows:

We have to teach them everything. Although the SLBFE gives them training, we still have to train them, like giving them advice. I mean you know the background of these maids. Advise them to be like this and that, you know to be good workers. (Local agent, male, 18th February 2022)

First they are interviewed by my office. However, regardless of whoever has interviewed them previously, the final interview is done by me. Because I want to make sure that my “passengers” migrate knowing all the facts, the truth. (Local agent, female, 4th March 2022)

Notably, a broker described her intermediation in the “most private and personal” of MDWs’ life as:

It’s like this, when a girl comes, I ask her, in her own language, in a way that she would understand, what birth control she takes. I tell her, now you’re getting ready to go abroad. If you miss one tablet, what will happen? I tell them, if you like you can get the four-month injection. So, they get it and bring us the card. Since they have no knowledge, it’s the responsibility of the agency, us, to guide them. (Local agent, female, 16th March 2022)

Training by brokers is therefore legitimised by a shared consciousness of MDWs as incompetent, uncivilised and problematic “Others” who need to be saved by the grace of enlightened and civilised brokers. The brokers arbitrated in and regulated the most intimate bodily space of aspiring MDWs—right to reproductive justice, a sexual life and bodily privacy in a violation of their right to bodily integrity and autonomy. It was not “just” about control over “the product” of a “good” migrant, but a form of violence against MDWs. Applying Galtung’s formulation of structural violence (1969) to Filipino and Sri Lankan MDWs, Henderson (2020, 1599) argues that social structures feed into systematically disadvantaging and discriminating against MDWs. These structures interact with each other, creating complex relationships of power that marginalise MDWs. The brokers used elements of culture, such as gender and class ideologies, to legitimise structural violence against MDWs, “making it look and even feel right—at least not wrong” (Galtung 1990, 291). Capitalistic human resource management always comes with some form or degree of violence. The brokers (re)produce migrant subjectivities by capacitating certain bodily skills and emotions while decapacitating others through their own versions of training. MDWs are turned into “passengers” before they even leave the country, thus framing “particular” Sri Lankan women, the social underclass, as readily available and well suited for menial labour in privileged private households in the Arabian Gulf.

Who is an “ideal” MDW?

The process of MDW recruitment leads to the production of different worker subjectivities which reflect different constructions of “ideal” MDWs. Driven primarily by worker remittances, the state’s construction of “ideal” MDWs coalesces around MDWs’ subjectivity to the state in terms of being and becoming “good” citizens. “Good” citizens are bureaucracy-savvy, law-abiding individuals, who potentially cause little trouble for the state. They are ideal neoliberal citizen subjects, who are self-responsible and self-supporting (Rodriguez and Schwenken 2013). These “ideal” MDWs are either responsible mothers and wives who provide and care for the family, or they are single women who have no childcare or family responsibilities (Beltran and Rodriguez 1996).

Interestingly, the Covid-19 pandemic saw the creation of new and unconventional subject positions in Sri Lanka’s migration industry. Subjects are “adorned” and “empowered” by appealing and compelling tropes, most notably “expat heroes” (rata viruwo)—the state’s advertising slogan for migrant workers—presenting them in such a way that they appear heroic and patriotic. MDWs are constructed as “heroines” who are ready to sacrifice themselves for the motherland and their fellow citizens by fearlessly taking part in migration at a time when Covid-19 made life tremendously precarious and dangerous for migrant workers. On the other hand, “ideal” MDWs are “professionals” performing domestic work, which is considered neither professional nor productive traditionally: they are socially and culturally valued individuals, performing a type of work that society takes pride in. The discourse of “ideal” MDWs therefore reflects alternative ways of making subjects and alternative constructions of the subject itself, which is informed by broader, more persistent patterns of hierarchy as well as by rather transient situational circumstances. It apparently signifies a transition in Sri Lanka’s migration culture from one of subject and subjectivity to participation and emancipation; yet it is unclear whether this transition is real or not.

The brokers’ and employers’ definitions of “ideal” MDWs overlap significantly and gain momentum in the capitalist market logic of striving to maximise one’s own benefits; “ideal” MDWs are cheap, hardworking, docile, disciplined and loyal. They are in “good” physical form, i.e. healthy, not ill, not too old or too young (Findlay et al. 2013) and have a “good” character, i.e. no run-ins with the police, running away, overstaying or being on the SLBFE blacklist. These are desirable bodily qualities which are co-performed by the state through migration policy. In terms of structural qualities, “ideal” MDWs are “good” mothers (nurturers), in their physical prime, experienced and trained in householding, fluent in English and Arabic, light skinned and non-Buddhist; certain representations through which global inequalities have been domesticated, embodied and personalised.

These constructions of subject positions are resisted and contested. Colluding with various actors, especially brokers, potential MDWs often threaten their subjectivation by the state. Faced with gendered emigration freezes, they have turned to irregular channels of migration to the Arabian Gulf insomuch as undocumented migration by women has become a matter of alarming concern in contemporary Sri Lanka. This questions the prudence and good judgement of state, where life chances of “particular” Sri Lankan women, perhaps those in need of economic migration the most, have been threatened and constrained by ill-planned state policy.

Conclusion

Women’s economic migration as salaried domestic workers to the Arabian Gulf is a serious business in contemporary Sri Lanka. Against the background of Sri Lanka’s ongoing economic crisis, perhaps the most destabilising shock of the global Covid-19 pandemic, money wired home by MDWs has become the financial lifeline for the national economy. A wide range of actors, including MDWs themselves, have invested in migrant domestic labour: the state, migration brokers, employers and the public, among others. They form extensive social relationships among one another. Their vested interest has meant that each party has made its own contributions to the pre-departure subjectivation of MDWs, taking cues from one another and referencing each other, thereby co-performing the construction of subjectivity through reproduction and contestation (see Fligstein and Dauter 2007). Therefore, in a socially constructed strategy to produce “ideal” MDWs, they integrate market components (e.g. price, demand and supply) and non-market considerations (e.g. laws, policies, norms, customs, values, beliefs and emotions) in a transnational labour market which is informed by a transnational consciousness of accumulation through reproductive labour. The production of different subjectivities requires different technologies of power and counter-power. Those technologies are private and personal as well as public and trans/national, through which “ideal” MDWs are given many, diverse, competing and completing readings, both enduring and transient.

The brokers are particularly significant in the pre-departure subjectivation of aspiring MDWs. Their intermediation is likely to increase in a context of increased relaxation of state regulation of MDW recruitment in a crisis-hit national economy that finds hope in women’s salaried domestic work in the Arabian Gulf. The brokers, portraying different constructions themselves, re/produce certain conditions, experiences and representations of MDWs that frame them in positions of subjectivity and exploitation. The subjectivities and subject positions are conventional, in the sense that they percolate being female, and unconventional, in that the praxis of travel and salaried work has recast the meaning of being female (see Shun-hing 2009). “Passengers”, as conventional or unconventional the term may seem and sound, are carved out in the pre-departure infrastructure to satisfy the changing demands of the private Arab household in different constructions of subjectivity, femininity (masculinity) and power: passengers are compliant and disciplined, but also unruly and undisciplined.

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on research within the FWF Lise-Meitner Programme project: ““Ideal” Migrant Subjects: Domestic Service in Globalization” (M 2724-G) led by Wasana Handapangoda (applicant/chair) and Brigitte Aulenbacher (co-applicant/mentor), Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria (duration: 11/2019-04/2023). I am thankful to the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Lise-Meitner Programme for the financial support, and all the research participants and the Sri Lankan Embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for their valuable contribution to my study. Also, I am thankful to the Editors of Global Society and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and thoughtful comments, which significantly improved the quality and clarity of my manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Lise-Meitner Grant, The Austrian Science Fund (FWF): [Grant Number M 2724-G].

Notes on contributors

Wasana S. Handapangoda

Wasana Handapangoda has earned her doctoral degree in Global Society Studies from Doshisha University, Japan, in 2011. She is currently working as a visiting staff member in the Department of Development Studies of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria. She was the principal investigator of the project, “Ideal” migrant subjects: Domestic service in globalisation, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Lise-Meitner Grant, M 2724-G (11/2019–04/2023) in the Department for the Theory of Society and Social Analyses, Institute of Sociology, Johannes Kepler University, Austria. Her current research interests lie in migration and social reproductive labour, intersectionality and identity politics, minority studies and embodied methods.

Notes

1 The mother tongue of the Sinhalese (ethic majority) in Sri Lanka.

2 In Saudi Arabia, the minimum monthly salary for a Sri Lankan MDW is 1,250 Saudi Riyal (an amount equivalent to some US$250). Price control through minimum salary constitutes a form of state technology, through which MDWs’ market value and bodily goodness are regulated.

3 Runaways are blacklisted by the SLBFE, stripping them of the right to migrate to the Arabian Gulf for work.

4 Tamil is the native language of Sri Lankan Tamils and Muslims, who represent large minority groups.